Merchants may wish to receive electronic payments from customers without the expense and inconvenience of establishing the conventional infrastructure necessary to process electronic payments. This need may be particularly acute among small and medium-sized brick-and-mortar merchants. These types of merchants may wish to receive payments in forms other than cash or check, yet may also wish to avoid spending money to purchase a point-of-sale device for processing credit cards and other types of non-cash transactions.
An increasing number of customers have mobile computing devices with network connectivity—smart phones, tablet computers, and the like—with them while shopping at brick-and-mortar merchants. Some of these mobile devices may be used to make purchases over the Internet through a web browser or other interface. Thus, it may be possible for the brick-and-mortar merchants to establish websites that the customers may use to make “online” purchases while physically at the merchant's location.
However, since the mobile devices are under control of the consumers, it may be possible for unscrupulous individuals to create “mockup” or “fake” user interfaces designed to show that a payment was made to the merchant when in fact there was no payment. Thus, a merchant may be unable to obtain strong proof that he or she received an electronic payment unless the merchant establishes his or her own infrastructure such as a networked computer. This requirement for merchant-side infrastructure can impose additional costs on merchants and may increase friction during the transaction while the merchant goes to his or her computer to confirm that he or she has received a payment.
It would provide advantages to both merchants and customers if there was a way for customers to pay merchants using the customers' mobile devices and also give the merchant confidence he or she has actually received payment.